“It is incredibly important that the IDF is a Jewish army acting according to Jewish law as part of the Jewish democratic state,” he stressed in a statement on the issue, saying soldiers should also struggle for their rights not to be present at cultural events involving women singing.

“At the same time, when we’re talking about a military ceremony involving the whole unit, there is nothing more correct from a halachic perspective than to be there with everyone else.

This should be the a priori position of the army and the military rabbinate,” Cherlow stated.

A senior right-wing rabbi has called for the dismissal of Colonel Eran Niv, commander of the officers' school at an IDF training base, and Gefen Regiment Commander Lieutenant-Colonel Uzi Kileger, in light of their decision to dismiss four cadets who walked out of a military ceremony in order to avoid listening to a female solider sing.

Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, head of the Har Bracha Yeshiva, wrote in his column in religious weekly "Besheva" that the "unfortunate and humiliating incident", in which the four cadets were dismissed and five other were forced to apologize, could only be repaired through a "firm demand" for the two commanders' dismissal.

The army does not intend to change its rules on women singing at military ceremonies or to exempt religious soldiers from attending these ceremonies, despite pleas to the chief of staff from both of Israel's chief rabbis and the public storm that erupted last week after four religious cadets were ousted from officer candidate school (Bahad 1) over this issue.

However, the army does intend to issue new guidelines aimed at clarifying the rules and will also make much greater efforts to explain them to soldiers, in the hope of preventing future such incidents.

After several religious cadets were ousted last November for refusing to listen to women sing at a ceremony, the IDF Rabbinate, the Education Corps and Bahad 1 tried to forge a compromise to prevent further such incidents.

The agreement, approved by IDF Chief Rabbi Rafi Peretz, adopted the view that the religious prohibition on men listening to women sing applies only to all-women troupes and not to music sung by men and women together. Hence religious cadets may not boycott the latter.

In two weeks or so, the IDF Rabbinate will embark on “Operation Elul” ahead of Rosh Hashana. This is a religious revival campaign mostly based on lectures delivered by rabbis to tens of thousands of secular soldiers.

It would be proper to allow a secular soldier who is not interested in hearing the lectures to skip them. Why? For the same reason religious soldiers demand to skip performances by female singers.

Sephardi Chief Rabbi Amar told the Chief of Staff that soldiers must be permitted to leave “in a dignified manner” events in which women perform, without it being considered the refusal of a military order.

Following Sunday’s meeting, the social freedom organization Yisrael Hofshit criticized the chief rabbis’ request and called on the Military Rabbinate to ensure that the army does not promote the “degradation and exclusion of women.”

“IDF commanders fail to understand that giving legitimacy to the silencing of women is another step in the attempts of religious extremists to turn the State of Israel and the army into dark places in which women do not enjoy equal rights,” the organization said in a statement, adding that the chief rabbis’ demand was part of a broader radicalization of religious life in the country.

The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel threatened to petition the High Court of Justice following the dismissal.

The Forum's representative, Attorney Yitzhak Bam, sent a letter to Gantz and to Chief Military Advocate General Avichai Mandelblit, claiming that "the right of every soldier, cadet and officer to maintain his religious belief is one of the foundations of a democratic society."

The letter also claimed that the commander's response to the cadets' conduct 'cause unbearable damage to the soldiers' faith which has a disastrous meaning."

The IDF, in general, goes out of its way to make certain that soldiers have the ability to serve in the army and to live halachically, should they so choose. If you’ve served in the IDF, you could rattle off a list of examples without much effort...

This is only a partial list, but even just these examples show that it is most certainly acknowledged by the IDF’s leadership that making it possible to be a soldier and keep Jewish law is far from catering to the whims of whiny 18 year olds.

For an army whose purpose is to protect the Jewish State and the Jewish People, this is quite serious.

The arrangement to defer service for yeshiva students made by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion in 1949 stated that a larger number of yeshiva students would be exempt from service, on the condition that they dedicate all their time to religious studies and nothing else - not even other types of education or volunteer work.

At that time, yeshiva students numbered 400. In 2010, that number had grown to 62,500, an increase of 15,500 percent.

Ben-Gurion wrote (referring to the violent demonstrations by the ultra-Orthodox on Saturdays in Jerusalem):

“I am of the opinion that I am responsible for this to some extent: I released yeshiva students from army service. I did so when their number was small, but now they are increasing. When they run amok, they represent a danger to the honor of the state...”

No issue so enrages secular Israelis about the chareidi community as the draft deferment for yeshiva students. Chareidi support for generous benefits for those who serve in the IDF is one means of mitigating that animosity.

As Rabbi Grylak frequently reminds us, we are a minority in Israeli society, and as such should not go out of our way to irritate our secular brethren, especially at a time when Prime Minister Netanyahu has already vowed to review internal social priorities in light of the "social justice" protests.

In an otherwise excellent article in Mishpachah arguing that the charedi community should accept that those who serve in the IDF should receive certain benefits not granted to kollel students, Jonathan Rosenblum writes as follows:

"We will not convince secular Israelis that kollel students protect Israeli society no less than IDF soldiers."

Never mind secular Israelis - you won't convince anyone of that. On a theoretical level, it has a very shaky foundation. On a practical level, nobody really believes it - not even charedim.

Reut, a Jerusalem middle school and high school, defies the usual Israeli dichotomy of “secular” or “religious.”

The school calls itself a pluralistic community, and it is part of a third stream of education that tries to bridge the gaps between secular and religious Israelis.

“Israeli society is becoming more and more polarized,” said Rabbi Michael Melchior, the initiator of the push for pluralistic schools and a former Knesset member.

“The secular schools have disconnected themselves from any kind of Judaism, and the religious schools have become more and more closed.”

Melchior, who served as the chairman of the Knesset's Education Committee, says that the Ministry of Education’s division of schools into “state” schools (i.e., non-religious) and “state religious schools” is outdated.

Meriton chief Harry Triguboff has inaugurated the Harry Oscar Triguboff Institute in Jerusalem, a project to aid the authentication of immigrants’ religious status.

The Institute will support spectrum of activities that will promote legislative and regulative efforts that will enable to establish a solid Jewish lineage and identity amongst FSU and Latin America immigrants within the Israeli society.

The initiatives operated in cooperation with the Tzhohar Rabbis Organization and with the support of the Toronto based Dov Friedberg Foundation, and the Jewish conversion team at the Prime Minister’s Office, include, among others, Project “Shorashim”, whose purpose is to assist thousands of emigrants from the former Soviet Union who are, to date, required to prove their Judaism when registering at the Israeli Rabbinate, prior to their marriage.

Anat Hoffman is the chairwoman of Women of the Wall (Nashot Hakotel), a group of Jewish women of all nations who are seeking the right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem, Israel.

Anat is the executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, and has held a seat on the Jerusalem City Council. She follows the Jewish principle of tikkun olam, repairing the world.

While there is no constitution, government policy contributed to the generally free practice of religion, although governmental and legal discrimination against non-Jews and non-Orthodox streams of Judaism continued.

For example government allocations of state resources favored Orthodox (including Modern Orthodox and religious Zionist) and ultra-Orthodox (sometimes referred to as "Haredi") Jewish religious groups and institutions.

Asked why the religious public stayed away from the protest, the respondents were required to select at least one answer from a variety of options.

According to the results, 43% of the public believe that the religious and haredi Jews were concerned that the governmental budgets they receive today would be cut following the protest.

Thirty-three percent believe it was because the religious public had no representation among the struggle's leadership, 29.5% said the religious sector feared that the protest's real goal was to bring down the government, 19% think the religious viewed it as a populist struggle, and 2% are convinced that the religious and haredi public simply "doesn't have any financial difficulties".

Despite some fairly muted opposition at the last minute from the religious camp – including a condemnation from Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger and another from MK Zevulon Orlev (Habayit Hayehudi) that this was “Sodom and Gomorroh,” and a last-minute withdrawal of funding from the Megilot Regional Council – the event went on as planned with no major incidents.

The writer is Chairman of Shavei Israel www.shavei.org, a Jerusalem-based organization that assists lost tribes and hidden Jewish communities to return to the Jewish people.

Last week, Shavei Israel, the organization I chair, ran a seminar in Syracuse together with the Union of Italian Jewish Communities. Dozens of Italian Bnei Anusim (“children of the forced [ones],” whom historians refer to as Neofiti or by the derogatory term Marranos) from Sicily and the southern Italian regions of Calabria and Puglia were in attendance.

Their Jewish ancestors had been compelled to convert to Catholicism half a millennia ago, but they had somehow managed to preserve their identity despite the Inquisition’s attempts to crush it.

And now, after so many generations, a growing number of them are looking to reconnect with our people.

Our excitement stems from the opportunity to open up a window onto piyyut traditions that have not received sufficient exposure, from the enriching encounter with top artists and performers, and from the connection we forge with the large and varied audience, whose presence and love of piyyut testify to the great importance of the festival and of the values that underlie it.

By the year 2013, Taglit-Birthright Israel would like to send 51,000 young Jewish adults annually on the free, 10-day educational trip.

This would mean that, at this participation rate, within a decade one in every two Jewish young adults worldwide would participate in a Taglit-Birthright Israel trip.

In January, the Government of Israel announced it would contribute $100 million in funding over the next three years to achieve the 51,000 goal, contingent on funds raised in North America and worldwide.

Lapid co-chair Gideon Shavit told Anglo File he was disappointed and frustrated by the government's foot-dragging.

"It's very important to bring high school students to Israel and the last 10 years the budget that the government allocates for this mission is basically nothing compared to other programs that are getting at least around $30-40 million a year," he said.

"For the last two years we are in discussions, sometimes it's good and sometimes the process is not moving forward. He added about 10,000 high school students come to Israel each year."

Professor Cohen concluded, “In short, younger rabbis and students do indeed differ from their elders and predecessors in their attitudes about Israel.

But the differences are not at all about declining connections or attachment to Israel.

Rather, they signal the advance of a more ‘liberal Zionism,’ one that bears many parallels with that advanced by classic Labor Zionists of the past, or many of Israel’s opposition parties today.

This move may cause some anxiety among some right-wing Zionists or supporters of the current Israeli government, but it does not constitute any diminution in attachment to Israel – at least not by rabbis recently trained, or now studying, at JTS.”

Whatever one might think about Gordis' assertions - and I'm sure this will hardly be the last word on this very-hot topic - Steven Cohen's new study on "JTS rabbis and Israel" should be now taken into account (Cohen does mention Gordis, more than once).

...Game over, then? Not really. This study also contains some chapters from which one can draw more nuanced conclusions. I'll try to write about this study some more in the coming days. In the meantime, you can spend your weekend thinking about the differences between reality and hype in all recent "distancing" debates.